No, sometimes it’s actual doctor shopping, because they know what their underlying problem is, and doctors refuse to treat it.
Example: a number of post-menopausal women know that the correct way to treat their symptoms is with hormone replacement therapy, which must involve an estrogen, a progesterone, and sometimes (often, really) a small amount of testosterone. Due to overblown studies from the 80s about certain risks from HRT–including breast and endometrial cancers, heart disease, etc.–a large number of doctors will flatly refuse to do HRT, or prescribe older/less effective treatments. So post-menopausal women with the means to do so will shop around for gynecologists until they find one that, first, takes their symptoms seriously, and second, is appropriately aggressive in treating it.
Hawke@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Also plenty of people with chronic illnesses need to find a doctor who at bare minimum understands that the disease exists and is willing to try to treat it.
And women looking for birth control or sterilization procedures (even when sterilization is a side effect such as treatment of endometriosis) will need to “shop around” to find a doctor willing to do so, especially if they are not married and even more if they have no offspring.